Digital televisions, personal computers and other similar devices provide a facility to navigate within the web-pages to traverse various applications or elements rendered in the web-page. The navigation involves movement of a graphical control (say a graphical cursor ring) throughout various focusable elements in the web-page such as anchor text (hyperlink), input receiving elements (such as cheque boxes, radio button, text-boxes), image, video files. Examples of various controls that may be used to execute such navigation may be actuation of tab-key along with modified keys such as “Shift” key to move sequentially along the focusable elements. Other examples of controls to exercise such navigation may include a remote control, a joystick etc.
In a web-page, the focusable elements such as hyperlink or non-focusable elements such as a plain text are stored in the form of nodes in a Node tree or a Document Object Model (DOM) tree inside a web-browser. The DOM tree is traversed initially while rendering the web-page and the nodes from the DOM tree that correspond to the focusable elements are stored in a ‘Cache List’ of the browser. The nodes may also be interchangeably referred as the webpage elements for being focusable in web-page and due to the fact that they are operable by a user.
As a result, when user wants to move the cursor ring in the right direction using the tab key or a remote control button to reach a focusable element next in sequence, the cache list is searched sequentially to determine if the next element or next node is spatially overlapping (based on a center-to-center distance between the adjacent nodes) in the right geometrical area of the earlier node within the web-page. A spatial navigation pattern algorithm may be used to determine an optimum intersection of the two areas. If there is no such node present in the Cache List, then the search proceeds in the downward direction. If a focusable node is obtained that spatially overlaps with the vertically lower geometrical area of the earlier node, then the cursor ring reaches the focusable node as retrieved in the downward direction. Upon subsequent actuation of the tab key, the search is again made in the right direction of the current focusable node and likewise, the direction of search proceeds linearly rightwards and downwards, if further tab-key is actuated by the user.
At least one drawback of the above-depicted search of focusable nodes is that the search is mandatorily performed for all focusable elements. In other words, the traversal based on conventional navigation techniques is based on accessing the nearest spatially overlapping node (either in horizontal or vertical direction). Such mechanism does not take into account the content setting or nature of the node for deciding the route of traversal from one focusable node to another. In other words, the current mechanism to navigate across the nodes in the web-page is node-neutral. In an example, if a user wishes to reach a last text box in a web-page from a currently selected text box located at middle of the web-page through using the tab-key and other similar navigation techniques, the same is only possible in an extreme case where there is altogether no focusable node between the currently highlighted text box and the last text box. Considering the trend of web-pages being congested and having a lot of focusable elements these days, the user has to mandatorily traverse each of the intervening focusable nodes (which may be images, hyperlinks, videos etc) to finally reach a preferred node or element in the web-page.
As per one of the known navigation techniques for web-pages that used tab-key or remote control based key, a method exists wherein the navigation is performed among discrete screen pages of a webpage displayed one at a time, and from one currently loaded webpage to another web-page that is associated with the hyperlink within the loaded web-page. However, such technique merely leads to an enhanced user interaction while following the conventional navigation pattern
Another prior art relates to a manner of navigating a web-page by defining a logical flow of multiple content regions in a display page, and initiating display of a first content region of the multiple content regions. In response to receiving a navigation input in the display page to view a next content region following the first content region in the logical flow, the second content region is identified that follows the first content region in the logical flow. However, the present prior art describes navigation through logical regions in a complete webpage, while not skipping any part of the web-page whether is relevant or irrelevant.
Another prior art relates to a method for browsing a media document having hyperlinks. The method includes steps of activating at least one sub-region on the media document, activating at least one hyperlink in the activated sub-region, and finally selecting the activated link in the activated sub-region. However, the described navigation is merely based on hyperlinks organized into sub-regions.
Yet another prior art describes a method of navigating data blocks in Web page and illustrates opening a first data block of a plurality of data blocks of interest. The plurality of data blocks are spatially indexed in N dimensions. Based on viewing a closeness relationship between the first data block opened and a second plurality of data blocks based on their content, the second data block is accessed which is observed to be closest to the first data block. However, the prior art compels the user to navigate across all of the data blocks, instead of jumping to a specific data block based on a user input.
Yet another prior art describes a user-input entered from a remote input device over an infrared (IR) link. The user input specifies a direction in which the user wishes to move a selection relative to a currently selected hypertext anchor. Based on the user input, a determination is made as to which one of the hypertext anchors is a best selectable hypertext anchor, and that hypertext anchor is then selected and indicated as such to the user. The user interface allows selection of hypertext anchors which are part of either client side or server-side image maps. However, the described sequential navigation only emphasizes navigation among selectable hypertext anchors.
Yet another prior art describes a method of navigation that includes dividing the web page into a plurality of blocks; assigning at least one indexing number to the divided block, receiving a user's command to select the indexing number; and displaying the block corresponding to the selected indexing number. However, moving from a particular type of web-element (say image) in one block to similar type of element (another image) in another block requires a user to manually identify the another block and determine its indexing number.
At least based on aforesaid, it may be understood that the existing state of the art is able to differentiate the nodes or web-elements only on the basis of the x and y coordinates in a web page and always exhibit a linear traversal, which is usually a combination of horizontal and vertical movements of cursor ring.
Thus, there lies at least a need to enable navigation of the focusable nodes in the web-pages that enables bypassing of unwanted focusable nodes in the course of navigation.